


For Fear of Angels

by SporkofDoom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24811411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SporkofDoom/pseuds/SporkofDoom
Summary: A glimpse into Crowley's feelings as he settles into his new life after Non-Armageddon
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	For Fear of Angels

For Fear of Angels

Crowley usually liked the cool, misty London air, so much more temperate than hell and slightly less smelly as well. The tumult and traffic in the city appealed to him. He watched cars passing by, most mundane, little metal boxes, but a few worth his interest. He had seen a 1959 Kellison J5 Coupe the day before. 

The sound that caught Crowley’s attention was an unexpected one. Was that the sound of angel wings? He could hear water, the quiet sound of the Thames in the background. Voices and vehicles mingled together, the noises of a city. In the distance, a Tower-of-Babel polyglot of spoken tongues merged together, sounds from many pockets of this world. But he had also heard… felt…a subtle change in the air around him. The faintest whisper of feathers above him.

He looked up, but saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual collection of two- and three-story brick buildings with taller metal structures rising into the sky farther down the road. He was standing beside a one-way street. Where was he? The cars parked on both sides looked older and hard-driven, some rusted, a few skewed to the side as if drivers had barely controlled their attempts to get off the road. Given the number of pubs nearby, Crowley was unsurprised. He had wandered some ways from the bookshop.

“Did you hear it?” he asked Eugenie. 

The short-haired, chocolate and tan dachshund wagged her tail. Sometimes she understood what Crowley was saying, but this last question was beyond her. She wagged her tail anyway. A Christmas present from Aziraphale, Eugenie understood Crowley better than anyone, even Aziraphale, and she knew that he was worried. 

Demons never concerned Crowley. The denizens of hell did not give a damn about creatures other than themselves, and even Hastur was not willing to spend time chasing Crowley. Too much work, and to what end? Once the holy water had failed, Crowley had been safe. Demons were lazy. 

Once Adam had decided to save the whales, no demon was going to try to undo that handiwork. No doubt a few demons even liked whales – like humans and angels, demons hardly fit one single mold. No demon might ever save a whale, but they would only attack them for fun and, fortunately for whales, thumbless, sea-going creatures were not much fun. Fighting Adam would be work, so the whales were safe. 

No, in any neighborhood, rich or poor, there was only one real concern, one overwhelming thing that Crowley noticed: a hidden silence, the kind of silence that might be left behind by angels -- the sound that follows wings gone out of earshot. He had always worried about angels.

Crowley listened carefully to the silence. The silence slipped through the cracks of the sounds of the river, punctuated by near and far-away traffic. An unremarkable silence filling up those cracks, absolutely pedestrian in its ordinariness, a silence should have escaped notice.

“I heard it, though,” he said to Eugenie. 

He reached down and picked up the dachshund. Her little legs could not go as fast as he needed to go. He had to get back to the bookshop. He had wandered farther than usual, perhaps almost two kilometers distant from Aziraphale’s untidy collection of books. Holding the dachshund, he looked around, saw no one, and popped back into the floor above the bookshop. 

“Sorry, Eugenie,” he said.

Eugenie wagged her tail again. Worried masters did strange things. Crowley sometimes made the whole world disappear, only to make it reappear in a different spot. She had become used to sudden shifts in scenery.

The corner bookshop was home, a place of refuge that Crowley and Aziraphale had built for themselves. Jumbled books occupied the first floor, haphazardly if not unattractively stacked and displayed, only a few intended for sale. The others were priced accordingly, and sometimes did walk out the door with happy new owners. Aziraphale figured that anyone who would pay £500 for a 1970s regency romance should own that romance. Crowley and the angel lived together on the second floor. 

Crowley looked around the surprisingly large apartment, also filled with books, many stacked on cases of wine and stronger spirits. Nothing out of the ordinary. The apartment appeared just as he had left it. Aziraphale was not in the apartment and Crowley did not sense him in the bookstore below. That probably meant the “Out to Lunch” sign had been hung on the door. 

“Nothing odd about that,” he said to Eugenie. He reached out and sensed the angel a few blocks away, probably at their favorite bakery. Then he collapsed in the comfortable, royal purple armchair beside a stack of Lewis Carroll first editions, focusing on Aziraphale.

Crowley stared bleakly into space. Maybe only one angel, his angel, could dance on the head of a pin, but the universe had no shortage of angels. And he had learned something in the last year. Despite happy heart-shaped emojis and Valentine’s Day chocolates, love was no happy-happy emotion. Love might lead to moments of ecstasy, but the emotion’s dark side remained a force to be reckoned with. And he couldn’t go back. Scrolling time backward, he could take himself perhaps to a safer place, but that would be a place without Aziraphale. Hell, it might be a place without humanity. How far back would he have to go? He had no idea. 

Earth began with Aziraphale for Crowley. He remembered Adam, Eve and that silly flaming sword. He remembered many shared moments, intersections in time when the angel had turned up. He had always enjoyed those encounters, that sense of a listener who could understand the joys of isolation on the third rock from this one sun. Crowley had been perfectly contented, glad to be away from Hell, left alone to drink and party across the centuries. Looking back, he could not say when the angel had ceased to be merely a pleasant companion and useful acquaintance. When had the valued listener and friend become… well, essential? 

One of the benefits of being a demon was an almost untouchable independence. Demons did not reflect or listen for small, quiet voices. Demons did not have to attempt to improve themselves. They could give into impulses. They never worried about consequences. Demons almost never had schoolboy crushes, and they never discussed their feelings. They did not dwell on their feelings, mulling them over and eventually powering through sensations of pain and loss or -- sometimes worse -- commitment. 

Crowley hated talking about feelings. His angel did not agree, though, and Crowley occasionally waded into the emotional muck. Aziraphale’s happiness demanded forays into that silliness, the relationship discussion. Crowley might require a few bottles of merlot to get through those discussions, but Crowley did his best. Angels talked about feelings all the time, he knew, and at first Crowley had thought: how hard could it be? The fact that those talks frequently led to Crowley desperately desiring to dye his hair, disguise himself, and flee to a Queen or Bowie concert was a fact he kept to himself. 

It had taken him awhile to recognize that fight or flight response that their relationship talks occasioned. He did not know how to process the feelings from those talks. He did not even know how to recognize those feelings. Demons kept their independence by not caring. But what happened when you did care? 

You had to worry about angels, for one thing. Crowley’s life had been so simple before he let Aziraphale into his life. No muss, no fuss, just a happy mercurial life filled with indulgences and eventually a good, fast car. Oh, he’d had moments of fear. Beelzebub and even Hastur had threatened his peace. The idea that he might have to leave Earth had always made him apprehensive. But he’d relished those challenges. Like a chess game, you moved yourself and you maneuvered the other pieces. Positioning was everything. He had almost always won those games. 

But angels. Angels were not exactly everywhere, yet no one knew when they might pop up. He could not maneuver large groups of angels, the one threat that mattered, the one threat that could undo his carefully constructed world. He was not sure if the heavenly host could take his Aziraphale away. He believed in Aziraphale. His angel would never leave Crowley voluntarily. They belonged, the one with the other, in their London apartment with their books, their spirits, their dachshund, and their stories. He had thousands of years of stories to catch up on still, not to mention the new stories the two of them were creating together.

But angels. They might not care what Aziraphale thought. They certainly would not care what Crowley thought. He believed the angels might try to reclaim Aziraphale. Loose ends were not allowed in heaven, he suspected.

Love’s dark side, Crowley reflected. Before Aziraphale, he had experienced disquietude, even apprehension. Now the sound of wings could take him straight to dread. An actual angel would probably inspire terror. He had never felt terror but he was aware that the experience almost undoubtedly lay in his future. After millennia, he finally had something to lose. 

No, he had _someone _to lose. Before Aziraphale, he could do what he wanted, go where he wanted, live life in the moment. Now… Now he listened for wings. Even when he wanted to just get drunk and go dancing, he was listening. Crowley hadn’t known that his life lacked meaning until Aziraphale gave that life meaning.__

____

____

Now… shit. He did not trust his oldest, truest, and … he had to admit it, _beloved _friend to watch out for himself. Aziraphale put the “A” in angel in Crowley’s book. Aziraphale had shared stories of the time right before Not-Armageddon, stories of Aziraphale _reasoning _with Metatron and Gabriel, trying to stop the impending war. The angel did not to this day understand how purely evil Gabriel could be, how futile his own interventions to save humanity had been. Never mind that Gabriel had tried to throw him into hellfire. In Aziraphale’s view, there were no bad angels, simply underinformed or misinformed angels. Gabriel had misunderstood, Aziraphale had explained to Crowley more than once.____

_____ _

_____ _

Non-Armageddon had reinforced his angel’s view. Yes, a bad thing had almost happened. Right had prevailed in the end, though, as was to be expected. Goodness naturally triumphed, Aziraphale had proclaimed, which was only to be expected. In the natural order, things worked out for the best.

Crowley knew the Earth’s Jews would take issue with that viewpoint. Historical cock-ups were common on Earth. In no universe was the war in Syria working out for the best for anyone, except maybe a few madmen. And what about those killing fields in Cambodia? The Black Death? The fall of the Tower of Babel? Well, that last might have been a win, but history was filled with events that no one could call “for the best.” Of course, Crowley only knew about these happenings because he had spent centuries taking credit for newly risen hotspots of the world. In the meantime, while he had been doing that, Aziraphale had mostly been reading improving illuminated manuscripts and then books. 

The worst part of the situation was that Crowley could see no way out. Angels were real, and angels were up in that heavenly firmament with all time at their disposal. Aziraphale had a trusting and unconcerned nature. He could not be counted on to watch his own back. 

After carefree millennia, Crowley now had to hold his own version of a flaming sword at his own gate. He looked down at Eugenie. Even Eugenie contributed to his uneasiness. If you loved someone, you could lose that someone. You could be knocked for six in an instant. Crowley finally had no choice except to offer a hostage to fate and fortune. He would have been willing to go to Alpha Centauri to avoid his fears, but Aziraphale ignored him whenever he brought up that topic. Aziraphale was completely happy with life just as it was. 

The bell rang in the bookstore below. Crowley rose from the purple armchair. He listened to the soft sound of Aziraphale turning the Out to Lunch sign around, and his lips quirked in a half smile.

“We are officially open again, ready to discourage passers-by from buying books,” he said to Eugenie before starting downstairs. He stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, just watching as the angel approached. 

“Chocolate eclairs, lemon macarons, and an apple tarte tatin,” Aziraphale announced. His wavy blond hair stuck out in all directions above bright hazel eyes. He grinned happily, holding out two white pasty boxes triumphantly.

Crowley took the top box. He would have to eat, he knew. Aziraphale would bother him until he gave in and took a pastry. One of the benefits of having a beloved was that one was forced to see the world sometimes through another’s eyes. Crowley found eating rather a nuisance, but he was already planning the cocktail that went with lemon macarons. Perhaps a combination of elderflower cordial, soda water and prosecco, he thought. He sighed.

Aziraphale looked over at him curiously.

“Are you alright? You’re not alright, are you?” He asked. 

Crowley smiled and bent in over the apple tarte box to kiss Aziraphale lightly on the lips. 

“I’m fine,” he lied. 

On some level he wanted to shout, to smack the stupid pastries to the floor, to wipe that smile off of that angelic face. But he understood how pointless those gestures would be. Aziraphale would forgive the damage to his snack. He would forgive Crowley, would sit down across from him with an expression of solicitude. He would listen attentively as Crowley talked about the danger of angels. He would put his arms around Crowley, holding him close, stroking his hair, nuzzling his neck. Aziraphale would kiss him, then kiss him again, and again, attempting to take the pain away. 

That pain could not be erased, however. Crowley understood pain in a way that Aziraphale did not. That was one of the few upsides from spending so much of his youth in hell. He did not exactly know what it would feel like to lose the one perfect thing that had ever happened to him, but he knew such a loss was possible. Aziraphale did not understand. 

The angel was too innocent. All the years on Earth, the struggles to do right, the betrayals by his own kind, Aziraphale had simply gone on. He had planted flowers and leaves, bought rare books, and sought out the finest French restaurants. He never worried about the immortal beings he had left behind in the sterile boredom where Gabriel was likely still hatching plots to start a useless war. 

Was that obliviousness good? Was it bad? Cynically, Crowley thought Aziraphale might have the right idea. Grow parsley and read Lewis Carroll, while eating macrons and drinking elderberry wine. 

“Good day?” he asked Aziraphale. 

“Marvelous,” Aziraphale exclaimed. “I found a very old English manuscript with hand-painted pictures of monastery life.”

“Ah,” Crowley said. He never knew how to answer announcements like that. 

That was the hell of it. Much of his life did not seem to make sense, but he could not do a damn thing about his situation. He couldn’t leave. This was the best life he had ever had. These were the happiest, most meaningful moments he had ever experienced. In some ways, they were the only meaningful moments he had ever experienced. After millennia, he had a stake in the game – a real stake, not a “let’s see how I can stay out of Beelzebub’s way today” stake. He’d been playing games forever, but only to use up time, to keep the minutes away as he went through his days. He hadn’t been exactly going through the motions. He’d enjoyed his life. But… he had always sensed emptiness in that old life. If anyone had asked him his purpose – and no one existed then who would ask such a question – he would have managed a funny quip, maybe something about unicorns or French vintages. But he had been indulging himself in a bored attempt to justify his existence and he knew that.

Now, in a rather unassuming apartment in a quaint area of London, above thousands of tomes he would never bother to read, he had found passion. He had found love. That discovery had cracked open a whole new world for him – and sometimes that world had more to do with hell than heaven. Before Aziraphale, he had been nervous at times, but never afraid. He had even crossed over into panic in the recent past: in his dreams, he kept returning to that burning bookstore. He had been annoyed before he fell over that emotional cliff, but his feelings for Aziraphale had taught him rage. He would happily have dismembered the heavenly forces that had thrown “Aziraphale” into the hellfire. Only the need to stay in character had kept him from that attack. So far, he had avoided dejection and despondency, but he had recently come to understand how these felt. A whisper of wings at the wrong time and he could … just… touch the edge of despair, just begin to empathize with the bereft. He understood enough to know that he never wanted to find out what the real loss of Aziraphale might feel like. 

What kept him from fleeing his new vulnerability? On the other side of night, he had found joy. Fun felt nothing like ecstasy. Liking felt nothing like loving. Damn it to hell and beyond, life with Aziraphale was worth any amount of pain -- even worth living in perpetual terror of angels.

Lyrics from one of his favorite songs, “Start a Riot,” came to mind:

“I will burn this city down for a diamond in the dust. I will keep you safe and sound when there’s no one left to trust...”

Trust. The first trust he had ever known. He loved his angel, the first love he had ever known. These other much less convenient feelings – he would learn to manage the buffeting from new emotional and spiritual forces, both real and imagined. He would learn to manage the sound of angel wings and other soft disturbances of the air. 

Because here and now, in this time, he had no choice. He bent down to pick up Eugenie, scratching her behind the ears. He wondered if dachshunds could be taught the scent of angels. 

Aziraphale came up behind him and embraced him, softly kissing his neck while beginning to undo his tie. He licked Crowley’s ear and laughed lightly, tossing the tie on the floor and beginning to work on the buttons. The angel smelled like apple tarte and elderberry wine. 

No, Crowley, thought. No choice except to brave any and all menacing angels. No choice at all.


End file.
